Learning how to promote your blog is an essential step in the progression towards monetizing your content and building a real business around your blog. Because without a steady flow of readers coming in each day, week and month—you’ll be left without a fundamental business model.

While I’ll be the first to tell you that creating highly impactful, useful content is the most important backbone of a successful blog, the bad news is that even if your content is truly the best in your niche—it won’t ever stand a chance at reaching your ideal readers… if you don’t learn how to promote your blog and get to those readers first.

In short, without readers regularly coming to your blog, it’s a little bit like shouting into an empty room.

The truth is that many bloggers simply give up shortly after they start their blogs, because they don’t quickly see the results they want. However, it’s important to start with realistic expectations. Blogging is not a business you can get rich quick with. It takes time, consistent work and the willingness to experiment with proven ways to promote your blog content.

We’ve established that before you can make money from your blog, you’ll need to have a steady stream of visitors coming in. If you already have a knack for writing useful content, then the next step is to tapping into the right promotional channels that can bring readers to your blog.

To help you do exactly that, here are my most effective, proven ways for how to promote your blog and grow your readership (faster) this year.

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and at no additional cost to you, I’ll earn a commission. When you purchase a product or service using my one of my affiliate links, the company compensates me, which helps me run this blog and keep my content free of charge to you. Know that I also only recommend products I personally stand behind.

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1. Optimize Your Blog’s SEO For Google Rankings

You’ve heard it time and time again. Your blog needs to be SEO-ready. To illustrate that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to blog SEO, here’s a screenshot of my own traffic from last year, showing that my blog generated over 4.4 million readers, largely from organic search (as a result of my intentional blog SEO strategies):

So, what exactly does “SEO-ready” mean in the context of promoting your blog—and how can you actually achieve SEO supremacy in such a competitive world?

Does it mean trying to use your target keyword in every other sentence, otherwise known as keyword stuffing?

Or does it mean writing content that you don’t personally care about… just so you can rank for great terms and drive in some traffic?

The answer to both of these questions is no. Keyword stuffing doesn’t help you rank higher and it makes your writing sounds insincere. Writing about things you don’t have an interest in (for the sake of scoring a “good” keyword ranking), will leave you feeling burnt out quickly. You won’t want to continue working on something you don’t personally care about, especially because you aren’t likely to see immediate results promoting that blog content.

That being said, ranking high in the most meaningful search results within your blog’s niche on Google, is still the most tangible source of ongoing (high volume) traffic.

Do Effective Keyword Research

The first step in properly optimizing your blog for SEO, is to learn how to do keyword research. Keyword research is the process of finding the right words or phrases that your ideal readers are already searching for on Google and other search engines. Thus, if you can create great content that ranks high for those proven search queries, you’ll be in a position to bring those readers to your blog. That’s why nailing your SEO is hands down the best, most long-term sustainable way to promote your blog.

Now, if you’re relatively new to blogging still—it’ll be difficult to instantly compete on the most sought after search terms right away. You’ll want to build some momentum by finding keywords that have these three characteristics:

Low difficulty

Medium to high volume

Medium to high click rate

In other words, you want to find keywords that a sizable number of people search for, yet not a lot of people are writing about yet. That’ll be the easiest way to quickly rank for keywords that can actually move the needle on helping you promote your blog (and bring in real readers).

Researching these keywords doesn’t mean you should forfeit your own ideas or interests for your blog, though. It simply means identifying the right blog post ideas that can align with (1) what you want to write about and (2) what other people want to read.

Doing keyword research with a free tool like Twinword Ideas will also show you exactly how to phrase things the way people are searching for it, thus giving you a very clear way to craft your titles and position your content.

Target Long and Medium Tail Keywords

When Google first launched and blogging was still fairly new, a blogger could target just about any keyword and expect to rank for it. Today, it’s extremely difficult to rank for a single word keyword. I’ll show you why…

I went to Google and typed in the word “blog” for this example. I put quotations around the word, so it would only show me results that include this specific word.

Google shows that there are over 13 billion search results for the word “blog.” Now, let’s see what happens if I use a more specific phrase like “how to name a blog”…

Hey, that’s me! 🙂 While there are still a lot of results (530,000+), that’s significantly less than 13 billion—and thus a much more realistic target keyword phrase to try and rank for.

Expanding your keyword into a longer phrase that has a more clear search intent behind it, will give you a much better chance of ranking in a meaningful place within organic search results.

This is called using long or medium tail keywords, and you can make your focus as narrow as you like. The more narrowly you focus your content (while still having enough appeal to bring in a meaningful number of readers), the more likely you’ll be able to rank for it quickly.

And while there are literally hundreds of different keyword research tools out there—ranging from premium paid offerings like Ahrefs and SEMRush for advanced bloggers—I always recommend starting with a free tool like Twinword Ideas that’ll get you started with highly actionable keyword research data and point you in the right direction for which keyword phrases you’d be best-suited to write about today.

Make Sure You’re Nailing Your On-Page SEO

Once you’ve created a shortlist of the top medium and long tail keyword phrases you should blog about, you can start the writing process.

Here’s a video tutorial I made about how to nail your on-page SEO:

Remember that keyword stuffing is never a good idea—but you should tastefully and contextually weave your keyword phrase in throughout your blog post when there’s a natural opportunity to do so. Keep in mind that one of the biggest factors Google uses to determine what a post or page is about, is the keyword phrase that’s used most.

The key though, is to make your content read as naturally as possible as if you’re speaking directly to a reader. It’s also incredibly important to include your keywords in your headline and within subheadings throughout your content (you can use this guide about how to promote your blog as a case study in terms of proper on-page SEO formatting).

Lastly, don’t neglect the power of choosing the right (lightweight) WordPress theme to power your blog in an SEO-friendly manner too. Your theme can impact everything from your default blog layout, to your page load time, how your content visually appears on mobile devices and more—so it’s a decision to make carefully.

2. Research Your Competition

Before you begin heavily promoting your blog, ask yourself this question… what is your blog offering that others aren’t?

If you haven’t done so already, now is a smart time to really dig deep and research how other top blogs in your niche are positioning themselves. Take close note of which content topics they’re choosing to write about and examine how they’re approaching their content format for different categories of blog post types.

Can you tell what is and isn’t working on the top blogs in your niche?

By comparison, what can your blog uniquely add to the world?

What information, skills or strengths do you have that are different than others?

What’s a new angle that you can take on an otherwise saturated topic to blog about?

Are there any gaps in topics that you can identify where readers are craving more?

One way to rank well on Google, is by writing about something other people aren’t yet writing about. What are a few topics that you’re interested in covering (that your audience will likely crave) where there’s a gap in the online marketplace right now?

You’ll still want to write about proven topics that people are already typing into search engines, but this is exactly where “low competition” keywords come in to play.

Clever ways to promote your blog by creating content that stands out from the competition

If you’re writing about something that’s already been covered many times before (high competition), then think about how you unique can make a standout version of the articles that already exist online.

What essential points are other blog posts leaving out, where you can fill a knowledge gap?

Maybe other blogs have decent information, but their graphics and images are of poor quality?

Could you film a detailed video tutorial to accompany your post (and teach in a more actionable content medium)?

Would writing a blog post that’s 10x more in-depth than the competition be more useful to readers?

Perhaps there’s a winning combination of these tactics you can employ?

The principle idea is that your goal needs to be creating content that adds real benefit to people seeking answers on the Internet.

If you’re able to do this consistently, you’re essentially laying the groundwork for a blog that promotes itself (by having incredibly helpful content).

Think of it this way—if almost everyone who reads your content feels compelled to share it with their own networks, your blog will have a much better chance of being shared virally on social media platforms, as well as ranking higher in organic search results for your target keyword phrases.

3. Learn How To Promote Your Blog to Your Target Audience

Most bloggers start out not really knowing who their target audience is—which presents a challenge if you’re trying to make a splash in your niche and become a well-regarded resource for people.

Until you begin publishing content and reaching out to online communities, it’s likely you won’t actually know who’s going to most interested in connecting with you (and your blog content).

It takes time to really learn who your audience is and what they’re interested in. Once you’re able to figure this out though, it becomes a lot easier to learn how to promote your blog directly to them—and thus focus solely on the promotion channels that get your content in front of your audience, while avoiding those who aren’t interested in your content.

Here are some activities to help you determine who you’re really writing for to and how to get them to discover (and care about) your blog content.

Who is Your Target Audience?

If you’re still relatively new to blogging, you may not have any idea of who your target audience is yet—and that’s ok. If that’s the case though, imagine who you want your audience of readers to be.

Many first time bloggers try to attract anyone and everyone to their blogs. While it may net you some short-term gains, this approach is ultimately ineffective and it’ll leave you feeling spread too thin or confused about which blog topics you should pursue next. Still, some experimentation is necessary in order to start promoting your blog and attracting any kind of audience.

As your blog continues to grow, you can rely on free analytics tools like Google Analytics that give you an ultra clear view of who’s visiting your blog, exactly where they’re coming from, the keywords they’re searching for and what they’re doing on your site. You can also use comments left on your blog and social media accounts, to learn more about who’s interested in what you’re doing.

Where Does Your Target Audience Spend Their Time (Online)?

Once you begin understanding the target audience for your blog, start thinking about who they really are—and where they spend their time online.

I always recommend thinking about your target readers in terms of the demographics and psychographics that define them:

Using this baseline understanding of who you want to promote your blog to, take it a step further and ask yourself questions like:

Is there a particular social media app that your demographic prefers?

What other websites or forums do you think they spend time on?

Do they read major publications, industry-level magazines or other blogs?

When you begin formulating your content ideas in terms of answering these questions before digging into the writing process, it’s a lot easier to promote your blog posts after they go live—because they already have a promotion strategy baked into the equation.

For example, if you’re blogging about gardening or homesteading, you probably don’t need to spend much time promoting your blog on LinkedIn.

In the same vein, if you’re starting a new tech blog, you may not want to pour a lot of energy into a tech-forward social network like Twitter (depending on what kind of technology you’re writing about).

Ranking high in organic Google search results is one facet of building a successful blog promotion engine, but you also want to create content that your readers will share with others—all on their own accord. Even if your content doesn’t go completely viral, having your content shared by your readers is enormously important.

If your audience is so excited about the content they discover on your site, that they feel personally compelled to promote your blog by sharing your content with their friends & family… then you won’t have to spend as much time tinkering with other promotional strategies. Ask yourself these kinds of questions to get to the bottom of this:

What type of content is my audience willing (and most excited) to share?

What emotions will make them feel a strong desire to click the share button?

What will they want to retweet or share on their Instagram story?

How can you thoughtfully ask them to share your content (with the right blogging tools)?

We’ll talk much in-depth later on in this guide about making your content easy to share (and how to engineer sharing on every major social network), but for now—be thinking about the type of content that’ll best prompt your audience into sharing.

What Are Your Audience’s Key Pain Points (and How Are You Going to Solve Them)?

Another factor to consider when promoting your blog content are the pain points you’re tackling. A pain point is a problem that your readers or potential readers may be experiencing.

Many bloggers rise to fame because they’re able to solve these problems for their readers. This doesn’t have to be overly complicated either. Sometimes a person’s problem is as simple as needing a new pair of running shoes. If your blog is about running, you can offer them a solution by recommending great pairs of running shoes for different types of conditions.

Let’s give a few more examples. Suppose you have a travel blog. What are some common problems or questions that your audience might have? Here’s a list of questions readers might ask:

Where is the best place to stay in Paris?

How can I travel affordably in London?

What are the best airline mile credit cards?

What are the best locations to sightsee in Japan?

What are the places I need to see when I visit South Africa?

You can use your blog to answer the most pressing questions for your readers. In response, you might write something like:

10 Best Hotels to Stay in Paris (on a Budget)

How to Travel to London and Not Spend a Fortune

15 Things You Must See When Visiting Japan

As you become more of an authority within your niche, your audience will respect your opinion—and want to continue returning to your blog for more.

They’ll know they can find the answers they’re looking for (within your niche) on your blog.

Not only that, but you’re also more likely to get clicks from the search engines over time, because you’re consistently writing about similar topics that people really want to know about in your niche.

4. Guest Blogging is a Great Way to Promote Your Blog

Guest blogging (or guest posting) is hands down the best way to start promoting your blog and driving incremental traffic from day one.

What is guest blogging? Simply put, it’s when you write content for another blog, in hopes that they’ll publish it—and as a benefit, you can get a quality link back to your own blog, potentially drive some traffic and also grow your personal brand by associating with this more established site.

The main reason why guest blogging is so effective to promote your blog, is the long-term payoff of slowly building your blog a portfolio of high quality backlinks (from the more authoritative sites you’re publishing your guest blog posts on). When you publish a guest post, you’re typically allowed to tastefully link back to your own blog either within the article or in the bio section at the end of the post—and those links that lead directly to your blog will both increase your blog’s authority & can drive real traffic.

Guest blogging also helps with your blog’s overall SEO health, because it signals to the major search engines like Google, that your blog is getting attention from other (more trusted and established) websites—which in turn helps your blog rank higher in search results over time.

How to Choose the Right Blog to Guest Post For

I’ll be honest with you, guest blogging (and doing it well) will be a lot of work. That’s why it’s essential that you only reach out to blogs & publications that’ll actually help promote your blog.

Your primary consideration is the type of blog or publication you want to write for:

Choose blogs to pitch that have a similar audience to the one you’re seeking to build

Aim for realistic prospects (i.e. you won’t guest write for Forbes without some existing credibility)

Remember that if you want to get real results in terms of promoting your blog through guest posting, relevance is everything.

That means if you’re a personal finance blogger, you’re not likely to get much traffic from guest blogging on a fashion blog—nor are they too likely to accept a pitch from you.

People interested in fashion might also be interested in cars, but they aren’t being primed for that on a fashion blog. They aren’t going to a fashion blog to learn about the best cars to buy. They’re visiting the site because they want to learn about fashion. Make sure that your blog is relevant to the ones you want to write for.

Another key factor is the size of the blog you’re pitching to guest write for. Take these considerations into account during your research process:

Aim for a blog that’s bigger than yours, but not so massive that you’re irrelevant to them

Try to find a blog that is about 3 – 5 times the size of your own blog (using a tool like Alexa)

Leverage any mutual connections you might have to get an introduction to the blogger

Realistically, this size blog is much more likely to respond to your outreach emails and accept a guest post from you. Though they may not have millions of readers, you’re still getting a chance to connect with a larger group of readers than what you currently have today—and you’ll be laying that necessary foundation of building a strong link profile for your blog.

Pitching Ideas Your Host Blog Will Want to Use

When coming up with pitch ideas for potential host blogs, remember to keep their style in mind. Pick the blog you want to write for first, and then come up with ideas that would fit into their image. Don’t just come up with a generic idea and try to sell it to a hundred different blogs.

Come up with custom-tailored pitch for your blogger outreach efforts, because these are far more likely to be chosen by the host blog.

Take the time to show your prospects how your guest post will add value to their readers.

If you’re not already familiar with a particular blog you want to come across and write for, take some time to read through their blog posts. Find out what their main message is, and come up with a few article topics that’ll help them with their greater mission—by creating useful content for their readers.

All blogs are more likely to turn down guest posts that don’t fit into their overall vision (and editorial plans), but will be more willing to work with you on finessing a pitch if you show a clear understanding of their goals, tone and relevant topics.

Tastefully Drive Traffic Back to Your Blog

After getting approved to write a guest post, you’ll have a chance to promote your blog (tastefully and within reason) in your article.

In the guest post you write, find ways to tastefully weave in a link or two (when truly relevant) back to articles on your own blog that you’d like to rank in Google searches for.

Your host blog will also likely let you have a bio section at the end of your guest post, where you can talk about yourself more—and link to your blog. If the host blog doesn’t allow you to have a bio or link back to your blog, I’d personally recommend moving on and pitching another site that’ll let you link to your site. In the end, this needs to be a fair value trade.

5. Use Email Marketing to Help Promote Your Blog

You could be forgiven for thinking that email is going by the wayside, with all the emerging social media networks cropping up these days—but email marketing remains a very vibrant source of traffic for many bloggers (myself included), even those that are just getting started and still have small email lists.

It’s predicted that the number of email users is going to grow from 3.7 billion to 4.1 billion by 2021. Couple that with the evidence that blog posts are also 3.5 times more likely to get shared on social media by your email subscribers, and that’s a potent reason to invest in email marketing from day one with your blog.

So, how can you use email marketing to more effectively promote your blog (and eventually profit)?

Let’s look at some of the main ways email can help you bring readers back to your blog over time.

Begin List Building to Promote Your Blog Content

List building is the act of collecting email subscribers from the pool of readers landing on your blog. The emails you send to your subscribers often contain things like:

Announcements about paid product or service offerings you’re launching

General updates about what’s going on with your blog

Email is a smart way to connect with your readers too, because you’re writing to a group of people who’ve already expressed interest in your content. They’ve voluntarily signed up for your email list, so they’re already hyper-engaged with you. This is your self-selected target audience you can promote new blog posts to first.

The 3 Best Tools to Use for Your Blog Email Marketing

Those running self-hosted WordPress for your blogs will need to find an email service provider (also known as an ESP), because you won’t have email marketing as a built-in feature of your blog. An ESP offers bulk emailing services and is a necessary resource for a sustainable email marketing plan once you’ve grown beyond a few dozen email subscribers that you can no longer manage in a spreadsheet + GMail.

There are many great email marketing tools to choose from, but my top choices are:

Email service providers do a lot of the background work for you, like managing your list of subscribers and helping you remain compliant with CAN-SPAM requirements.

Those just beginning to grow your email list can benefit most from using a free tool MailChimp. They allow you to use most of their features for free, with up to 2,000 subscribers. When you get close to surpassing the 2,000 subscriber mark, then my number one choice to go with from there is ConvertKit—they’re built well for scale and have so many more useful features.

If you’ve used one of the three email marketing tools I recommend (above), then you’ll also be given either a small code snippet—or easy to install plugin—that you can use to integrate the tool with your WordPress blog. From there, when new subscribers sign up on your blog, that information will be passed automatically to your email marketing tool (and the subscriber will be added to your list).

You can use your email capture forms on several places across your blog including:

In your blog’s header

In your blog’s footer

On dedicated landing page

At the top (and bottom) of your blog posts

In a pop-up window

Wherever readers are spending time on your blog, be sure to always have a relevant email signup offer close by.

How to Engage Your Email Subscribers

Growing your email list is more than just getting readers to sign up. It’s even more important to keep current subscribers as engaged as possible after sign up.

Subscribers that join your list and don’t hear from you for weeks… are likely to unsubscribe as soon as they get your next email, because they’re more likely to forget when (or how) they signed up for your emails—which will undo the hard work you put into collecting subscribers in the first place.

Here are a few things you can do to keep your emails more interesting to your subscribers:

Use storytelling in your emails: Many blogs use a newsletter to update their readers about what’s happening behind the scenes. This could include personal details about your life or just news-related information about your blog—and ideally some info that’s in addition to just the content you’ve posted on your blog each week.

Nail your email subject line: Subscribers won’t open emails with headings that are uninteresting or misleading. Knowing what kind of subject line to use, goes back to knowing your target audience. Your audience may respond best to humor, or they may prefer something more informational and straightforward.

Keep it simple: People only have so much time to read their emails. Spare them a long, boring email and deliver effective, to-the-point content with a call-to-action of clicking through to read more if they’re interested in the subject matter at hand.

Getting a strong financial return from your blog email marketing efforts doesn’t need to take weeks, months or years, either.

If you can genuinely connect with the readers on your email list, then you can work directly with them on problem-solving their greatest challenges. Those experiences (and insights) can lead to a future book, online course, podcast, product, consulting/coaching opportunity and even more ways to monetize your blog audience.

6. Grow Your Social Media Presence (Where it Matters)

Social media is another extremely effective way to promote your blog. Be warned though, social media is not as easy for blog promotion as it once was.

Platforms like Facebook and Instagram offer paid boosting opportunities, but free organic engagement is much harder to come by these days.

That’s not to say that social media isn’t profitable for bloggers. It’s still a great way to grow your brand and promote your blog—but expectations need to be set carefully. It just means that you’re going to have to spend precious time cultivating your social media presence (on the right networks) if you want to make a real impact in terms of driving traffic back to your blog.

Unless you’re paying someone to manage your social media accounts and spend a healthy amount of time engaging with your target audience on multiple platforms, you’ll more than likely be spread way too thin thin trying to keep up with every type of social media—alongside running your entire blog too.

Now, because what’s working today in terms of learning how to promote your blog on social media is dramatically different from platform to platform, we’re going to break this down one social network at a time, starting with Pinterest.

How to Promote Your Blog on Pinterest

Pinterest is one of the more valuable social media platforms for new bloggers to maximize their return on today. The platform has 322+ million monthly active users, making it one of the most popular social media platforms on the market today—especially if you reach an audience that skews more toward women, as they have a 70% female user base.

One of the most appealing things about Pinterest, is the life expectancy of a pin. While a tweet on Twitter or post on Facebook has a very short life span (minutes or hours), pins on Pinterest can last for months. You’ll likely see the most engagement in the first week of a pin’s life, but the magical thing about Pinterest, is that a pin can re-emerge months or even years later and regain popularity—thus promoting your blog and driving traffic in the process. This is far less likely on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

Here are some quick tips on helping to get started with learning to promote your blog on Pinterest:

Create a business account with Pinterest: Creating a business account allows you to view your account’s analytics and see how your pins perform in terms of impressions & clicks over time. This information is pivotal in learning how well you’re promoting your blog on Pinterest.

Design Images for Pinterest: Pinterest will grab images from your blog post to use as the featured image on a pin if you just paste in the link to an article. However, for the best results, you should make an image specifically designed for Pinterest. A 2:3 aspect ratio is best and the image should include recognizable branding from your blog. Include this image within your blog post, so others can use it when they pin your content. You can use premium design tools like Adobe Photoshop or free ones like Canva for creating these images, which has ready to use templates for Pinterest-sizes images you can share on your account.

Use Pinterest SEO: Like when optimizing content for Google, Pinterest also has its own algorithm powering how they recommend content to their users. To rank higher on Pinterest, try using SEO best practices like writing catchy headlines that include your target keyword phrases and crafting helpful descriptions. Claim your website on your Pinterest account, enable rich pins, commit to pinning consistently (expect a return over the course of weeks or months) and of course make sure you’re doing smart Pinterest keyword research.

How to Promote Your Blog on Facebook

With over 1.62 billion daily users, Facebook hardly needs an introduction. The biggest selling point for using Facebook to promote your blog, is the large volume of people that use it. That’s a HUGE amount of activity for one platform, and it gives you the opportunity to reach a giant audience of potential blog readers.

The biggest drawback to Facebook, is the lack of reach you have on the platform—especially if you’ve just created a new group or business page. Facebook severely limits your visibility if your page is not quickly gaining a lot of momentum. If people aren’t highly engaged from the start, Facebook is not likely to show your content to many users on their feeds… unless you’re willing to put some advertising dollars behind boosting your posts.

There are still ways to attract real organic traffic from Facebook though, and I’ll talk about a few of those here. Paying for promotion is also an option, but for now, let’s focus on the free blog promotion strategies:

Join groups in your niche: One of the best ways to promote your blog on Facebook, is to join relevant groups that already exist to discuss topics within your niche. Make sure that the groups that you join allow you to promote your blog before joining though, otherwise you’ll get quickly booted. It’s also important to engage with other people’s posts and interact before you start sharing your own content. You don’t want to come across as a spammer and you’ll likely lose their interest if this is your only contribution.

Start your own group: Instead of only joining other people’s groups on Facebook, you may want to consider starting one of your own (where you get to make the rules and guide the discussion). Think about what kind of group you would want to make, in order to attract your target audience. What would get them excited? Once you’ve figured that out, launch a group and start building community.

Start a business page: Start a Facebook business page that includes all your blog’s information, including a link back to your blog. Facebook will give you access to your page’s analytics, so you can see how many people are viewing and interacting with your posts, as well as your rate of engagement.

Engage your audience: Once you’ve started growing an audience, keep them engaged with regular content. This could include funny memes, updates about your blog, video walkthroughs and breaking news about your niche. Consider including questions in your Facebook posts too, in order to get people to respond and remain engaged.

Respond to comments: If people are leaving comments on your Facebook posts, try to respond to them as quickly as possible. Comments signal to Facebook that your post is getting attention, so you want to encourage commenting as much as possible—which can trigger their algorithm to surface your post more widely in people’s news feeds.

How to Promote Your Blog on Instagram

Instagram is an image-rich social media platform that’s continued to gain traction since its launch in 2010. Instagram has about 1 billion people using the app each month, and users spend an average of 28 minutes per day on the platform—which makes this a great destination to promote your blog, especially if your content is visual in nature.

One interesting thing about Instagram, is that it attracts men and women at a nearly equal rate—52% female and 48% male. This is a big difference when you compare it to Pinterest which has a 70% female user base.

Like with Facebook (which happens to also own Instagram), it can be difficult to get free organic traffic, though. Unlike on Facebook, however, you do have a bit more control over your audience. You can connect directly with like-minded people by following people in your niche, engaging and easily messaging with them. To find these like-minded people, simply search popular hashtags in your niche. Once you find accounts similar to yours, you can follow them and they may follow you back and lead to eventual collaborations.

Here are a few more actionable tips to help you promote your blog on Instagram:

Make the best of your Instagram bio: Unless you have 10,000+ followers, Instagram doesn’t allow you to use links directly in your stories or photos. That’s why it’s so important to use your bio to link to your blog as you’re growing your following. Instagram doesn’t give you a lot of space to introduce yourself, so make the most of the space you’re given. Your bio is a good way for people to learn about who you are. Be specific about what you do and what your blog is about—bonus points if you include a call to action to direct followers to your blog from your bio.

Use a link tree: Since you’re only able to include one link in your Instagram bio, many people choose to use a link tree as their one allotted link. Using this free tool allows you to include several links to different destinations. If you have a store, multiple specific blog posts that just came out, or a YouTube channel you also want to promote, they can all be listed using link tree.

Post high quality and eye-catching images: Since Instagram is so image-rich, it’s nearly impossible to grow a following without high quality images that’ll capture the attention of your followers. If you don’t have a cell phone that takes great photos, you may want to consider using a good digital camera to take your photos. Your pictures can show behind the scenes of your blog, tease upcoming content and give beautiful snapshots of things you’re working on.

Engage with other users: One way to grow a following on Instagram, is to regularly interact with other Instagram users. Follow, like and comment on other people’s accounts regularly and you should start to build relationships with real people. Find a hashtag that you’re interested in and spend twenty minutes liking and commenting on other people’s posts. There’s a good chance that you’ll get engagement in return from at least a small portion of the people.

How to Promote Your Blog on Twitter

Twitter doesn’t have quite the activity level that Instagram and Facebook boast. It has about 330 million monthly users, putting it on about the same level as Pinterest. That’s still a huge population of people to work with, and for those who love Twitter, an excellent place to connect with your potential audience (and promote your blog).

In order to figure out whether your blog niche fits Twitter, consider these statistics. A whopping 56% of Twitter users recently ranked “following the news” as their #1 reason to use this social media platform. If your blog is related to news, business, politics, entertainment, new technology, or sports—Twitter will likely be a good fit to promote your blog. Other niche topics can also do very well on Twitter, so be sure to do your research to see if there’s an active community for you to start interacting with.

Twitter can also be hugely beneficial in driving traffic to your blog, because users are conditioned to expecting that most tweets will contain a link—and your followers can retweet your tweets, thus amplifying them to their own audience. If you’ve written something that resonates with your audience, your tweet can be quickly passed on to new accounts through viral re-sharing.

Using Twitter to Generate New Content Ideas for Your Blog

In addition, you can use Twitter to easily come up with new content ideas for your blog. This platform can give you an up-to-date look into the thoughts and ideas that have people’s attention at the moment. What’s trending right now? What kind of tweets are getting retweeted again and again? Use that information to attract the type of audience that you want.

By all means, use hashtags: Using hashtags can reportedly lead to 100% more engagement on your content. However, you should only use one or two hashtags, or you risk lowering engagement again as the tweets will look more like spam than a genuine message.

Use videos too: Twitter is largely known for being a text-based platform, but images and videos are also important. It’s been reported that people watch 2 billion videos on Twitter each day, and they’re one of the most engaging content formats that’ll pop up in a user’s feed.

Be careful with automated tweets: Twitter rolled out some new rules in the last few years to reduce the amount of spam that was circulating on its platform. These new rules prohibit Twitter users from posting the same content to multiple accounts. You’re also prohibited from posting duplicate content, multiple times on a single account.

Use ClicktoTweet links in your article: A neat feature of Twitter is allowing sentences or phrases to be tweeted directly from your blog post. Here’s an example of what that looks like from within my in-depth guide about starting a successful blog this year:

How to Promote Your Blog on TikTok

I’ve included TikTok on my list of social media platforms you can use to promote your blog, primarily because it’s so new and it reaches a very specific demographic of Millennials and younger people. While you’ll find TikTok users that range the spectrum of age, your primary users are going to be in the Gen Z and Millennial crowds (think about 15 to 30 years old).

What’s exciting about Tik Tok? For one, it’s a new way to connect with people that’s still getting a lot of buzz and momentum. It’s a platform made entirely of short videos—many of which are just funny. It’s one of the fastest-growing platforms globally and has over 800 million monthly users.

Only time can tell if TikTok is a flash in the pan, but statistics seem to indicate that it’s not. It continues to be downloaded at a steady increase, and so far there have been over 1.5 billion total downloads, 123 million of which are in the United States alone. It’s also estimated that users spend an average of 52 minutes per day on the platform, which is very high for a social media app.

Because TikTok is so new, there aren’t a ton of statistics showing how much traffic it drives. However, there are quite a few brands that have used TikTok successfully in their promotion plans already. For example, the fashion brand Guess partnered with TikTok and launched a hashtag challenge. It resulted in thousands of TikTok users using the hashtag #InMyDenim.

If you want to try using TikTok to help promote your blog, here are a few ideas:

Create fun content: Create short videos on your TikTok account that show off your personality and catch people’s attention. If people find you funny or relatable, there’s a better chance that they’ll be interested enough to check out your blog and learn more about you.

Start a hashtag challenge: Like the company Guess (and many influencers), you can try to get your own challenge trending. Think of something that connects to both your blog’s brand and your audience’s desires—then strategize on how to create a video that’ll entertain them. Challenge people to make or recreate a similar video with your branded hashtag.

Reach out to TikTok influencers: There are a lot of people who’ve already become TikTok famous. Many of these people are ordinary people that found a way to connect with an audience and have built a massive following. Consider teaming up with a TikTok influencer if your blog is something they’d be interested in collaborating with.

Final (General) Guidelines for Promoting Your Blog on Social Media

Here are some general guidelines you should always follow when using social media to promote your blog content.

These rules apply to almost every platform, so lean into these suggestions regardless which social network(s) you decide to use for promoting your blog.

Link to your social media accounts: Place easily recognizable social media icons around the pages of your blog (to encourage following) and strategically within your blog posts (to encourage sharing). Make it easy for people to find your social media accounts. If you use several social media platforms, use them to link to each other. For example, you can include a link to your Twitter account on your Facebook page. You can also include a link in your emails to your email subscribers. Think about it like you’re creating a network for your blog, making it as easy as possible for people to follow what you’re doing.

Use proper images and sizes: A major part of successful blog promotion is visual. People connect with images and videos that they find appealing. One of your strategies for promoting your blog is understanding the correct image sizes and resolutions. For example, vertical images tend to do better on Pinterest. It takes a bit more time to custom create images for each platform, but your rate of engagement is likely to be much higher when images are correctly sized for optimal engagement. If you’re unsure of best sizing practices, Sprout Social maintains and up-to-date guide on proper image sizes for each type of social media.

7. Make Your Content Shareable

Part of your job as the chief promotor of your blog, is to make content that’s easy to share. Not only do you need to get readers to your blog posts, but you also have to make those blog posts great enough that your readers will be encouraged to share them with other people in their networks.

Here are some pointers to help you create shareable content that’s designed to attract more readers:

Make Your Content Easy to Digest and Understand

The complexity of your blog post, is somewhat dependent on who your audience is.

If you’re writing a tech blog for techies, your writing will obviously be more technical. You may turn off people who aren’t as familiar with technology, but you’ll be writing to your target audience—so you’re still doing the right thing by carving out a clear style.

For most blogs, a good rule of thumb is to “write to an 8th-grade level.” That may sound condescending at first, but writing on the Internet is different than print writing.

When reading online, people tend to skip around, skim and look for key points & headers. That’s why it’s necessary to avoid long walls of text with no spacing, images or dividers to break the content up.

Clear headers, shorter paragraphs and well-defined sections are the key to making your writing accessible. Use this post as an example 🙂

Use Titles That are Interesting (or Help With a Clear Pain Point)

I’m not a big fan of clickbait article titles, but there is an art to writing effective headlines that encourage readers to click through and come to your blog.

Primarily, you want to use smart SEO strategies when writing your article titles—so that searchers find your headline to be the most appealing. That being said, you also want your title to be attractive to people who may come across a link to your blog post on a social media platform or in a forum. I talk much more about this in my guide to writing a blog post, but here are some of the main takeaways:

Use numbers: Numbers visually stand out in a title. Whether you’re doing a round-up post or just including the year, this can make your headline noticeable.

Make your headline interesting: Will people be likely to click on your post when they see your headline? Will they want to share it on Facebook, Twitter or in their Instagram stories?

Include a paint point in your headline: Give people a reason to click on your links. Use your headline to show them how your blog post is going to help them solve a clear problem or challenge.

If you’re still unsure about how to write a compelling headline to promote your blog posts, then look to your competitors for inspiration. Be careful never to copy or use an exact title that a competitor already has, but it’s smart to draw inspiration from what’s clearly already working well.

8. Learn From Your Analytics (to Promote Your Blog Better)

In its most simple form, analytics is anything that gives you insights into your blog’s performance. As you look at your analytics platform, you can glean a lot of important information about what is and isn’t working when it comes to promoting your blog.

Google Analytics is the most popular free platform for gathering insights about your blog, but there are other things you can study as well. For instance, if you run a pop-up tool for email subscriptions on your blog you can study its success.

How many people saw the pop-up (impressions)?

How many of those people subscribed after seeing it?

How many of those new subscribers remain engaged on your list?

Clearly, you can also use analytics after you’ve grown your email subscriber list. Most email marketing tools will give you insights into things like your open rate and click-through rate.

Which emails are people opening and which ones are they discarding?

How many people unsubscribed after opening your email?

Which A/B tested headlines performed better with your audience?

This kind of data will help you understand more about your blog audience and better calibrate for more successful blog promotion in the long run.

If you’re interested in using your analytics as part of your promotion plan, here are some of my best recommendations.

Set up (and Use) Google Analytics

Those of you who aren’t already using Google Analytics will benefit greatly from this free tool.

We’ll explore other tools I recommend further in this guide, but I want to zoom in on this one first. Google Analytics allows you to learn pivotal information about your blog’s visitors.

You can learn what blog posts are attracting attention and which ones aren’t

You can identify your exact sources of traffic for your individual blog posts

You can even see which keywords people are searching for before clicking through to your blog

You can monitor average session duration (to see how long readers stick around)

You can get in-depth insights about who your audience is, where they’re from and much more

Google Analytics will also give you useful data about what your blog’s bounce rate is, where traffic is coming from and much, much more.

Study Your Social Media Analytics

If you opt for a business account on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest, these platforms will give you extremely helpful analytics about how your content is performing. See my recent Twitter analytics here:

Google Analytics will always tell you when you receive traffic from a social media site, but the individual social media platforms can tell you how well an individual post is performing—or give you general trend lines on how your content is performing over longer periods of time.

Imagine that you posted a pin on Pinterest and it resulted in a higher than average number of clicks. You can go back and figure out why a particular post worked better than another:

Was it the image design?

Was your description better?

Did you pick a topic that was trending?

Even if it didn’t result in an uptick in link clicks, Pinterest will tell you if people selected a close up of your pin. These insights are priceless because they give you a real idea of what your audience wants more of.

Pair Your Analytics with A/B Testing

Few bloggers make it to being successful without a lot of experimentation along the way.

When you first start blogging, your content promotion efforts can feel like a bit of a scattershot. There’s not enough data to make an informed decision about what’s working and what’s not… that’s one of the reasons I love A/B testing so much.

A/B testing, sometimes called split testing, simply means trying two different versions, variations or methods, to see which one gets better results. You can use split testing with almost anything.

You can use it to see which pop up results in the most email subscribers

Which time of day works best for posting

What types of headlines people click most, and so on

Pinterest users often post more than one pin per blog post, just to see which one performs better—and that’s a form of A/B testing as long as you’re making informed decisions based on the conclusions you gather.

Even if your blog is already successful, you can still likely improve your results with thoughtful split testing. Never stop optimizing your blog for even better results.

9. Interact With Your Audience

The sooner you realize that a core purpose of your blog (should be) to help people—and touch their lives in a meaningful way, the quicker you’ll be able to promote your blog content in a way that’s authentic, meaningful and invites your readers to crave interaction with you.

The more you engage with your audience and bring them into the conversation, the more they’ll engage with you.

This is true on your social media accounts, as well as right on your blog. Here are a few of my tried and true ways to help increase your blog’s engagement—and position it well for encouraging your readers to promote your blog on your behalf.

Make it Easy for Readers to Comment on Your Blog

Don’t make it difficult for people to leave a comment on your blog posts. That means, if you’re running your blog on WordPress, be sure to enable comments on your posts. If you’re using a free blog platform (like Wix or Squarespace), then make sure you turn that feature on in your settings.

Some readers may want to leave a comment asking you an important question (that could fuel the idea for a new blog post topic to write about), but they won’t spend a long time searching for the comments section if it’s buried somewhere deep down the page.

Position your comments section immediately after your blog post ends, so they don’t have to work hard to comment and engage with you.

Respond to the Comments on Your Blog

Take it from me, your readers want to feel like they can reach out and make a connection with the person behind the blog.

If people are taking the time out of their day to ask a meaningful question in a comment on your blog, then it’s a great investment to find the time to respond (and answer their question, if applicable).

With over 9,000 comments here on my blog, I’ve worked hard to respond to every question I’ve gotten over the past 6+ years. Sure, it takes time… but that’s some of the most rewarding, meaningful work I get the pleasure of doing with my readers.

Ask Your Audience Questions

Help your blog readers feel like they’re part of your process by asking them questions within your article—or at the very end of a blog post.

People like the opportunity to share their own thoughts and insights—which often leads to ideas, tactics or feedback that you hadn’t thought of on your own. It’s also a great opportunity to learn more about what people want from your blog and where you might have some room for better solving their needs.

Identify How to Best Help Your Audience

Most blogs have an about page (like mine) or a start here section, but are you using those pages to your best advantage?

Your about page is a golden opportunity to tell a story about who you are, why you started your blog and gives the space to show your readers why they should care about your blog.

It’s also a good place to build your own credibility, establish trust, show visitors why they should listen to you—and spell out exactly how you can help them in clear, tangible examples.

If readers can’t quickly identify the purpose of your blog, there’s a good chance they won’t feel like sticking around.

10. Use Existing Content to Promote Your New Blog Posts

One trusted strategy for learning how to promote your blog more effectively (especially after you’ve started making some real progress), is to use your existing content—where some readers are already landing—to promote your new work. That may sound strange, but it’s actually a pretty simple concept.

Starting with the basics, there are two main types of links that you can use within your blog content:

Internal links: Internal links direct your readers to other pages and posts on your own blog

Using internal links is highly beneficial to your own blog—not only because it lowers your bounce rate, increases the chance of expanding your email list and gives you more opportunity to make a profit from your content—but because it also passes around the positive SEO benefits you may be experiencing if one of your articles is gaining popularity online.

In order to have quality internal links though, you first have to create a content ecosystem. As you grow your blog over time, imagine how all of your content can work together—keeping in mind the relationships between different content mediums like blog posts, eBooks, case studies, landing pages, press releases, videos and more. Here’s an visual of what a content ecosystem looks like:

When executed properly, your blog posts can work as a web of related content—all linked together and supporting each other. Think of the primary questions your blog readers might ask (as related to your niche) and treat your content ecosystem as a means for answering all of those most pressing challenges through a related series of content. As you publish new content, frequently evaluate where you can go back and internally link to your new work, from existing posts that already get some readers.

It takes time to build up a content ecosystem, but as you publish more blog posts, build a habit of returning to your older content for updates and new internal link opportunities.

11. Connect with Influential People in Your Niche

Networking isn’t just for people who work at large companies and are trying to climb the corporate ladder. It’s necessary for almost every line of work—especially for bloggers who spend the majority of their time working at home or from the local coffee shop.

Seeking out other people in your niche (or related niches) through smart blogger outreach, is an outstanding way to gain more exposure for your blog.

I wouldn’t be nearly as successful today if I hadn’t started reaching out to other influential bloggers, startup founders, podcast hosts, authors and speakers in the greater blogging community.

On top of that, we’ve already mentioned guest posting as a win-win way of networking with other bloggers in your space, but here are a few more ways that you can expand your audience by working with others.

Get Interviewed on Other Blogger’s Podcasts

Whether you have a podcast of your own or not, you can still pitch yourself to become a guest on other people’s podcasts. Podcasts are gaining a lot of momentum (again), and you can gain some real traffic and exposure by being a guest on the right shows.

You don’t have to wait until someone reaches out to you, either. Take the initiative by carving out some time each week to contact the hosts of podcasts you’re personally interested in—and where it appears your target audience is regularly tuning in. Eventually, you’ll match up with the right show.

Of course, before you can begin pitching yourself to other people… you have to provide something worthwhile to say.

As with guest posting, don’t waste your time pitching ideas to potential podcast hosts that don’t align well with their show topics.

What do you have to uniquely offer their show?

What’s an exciting story angle you can highlight that listeners will care about?

Does your story fit well with their typical style and format?

If you can bring an exciting, entertaining episode idea to the table in your podcast pitch, as host is far more likely to want to include you in their upcoming lineup.

Host Thought Leaders in Your Niche

Appearing on other people’s podcasts and blogs is a great way to promote your blog expand your audience, but it works the other way as well. Inviting people to guest post on my blog and be interviewed on my podcast has been an incredible opportunity for my own blog—both in terms of the relationships I’ve built and the quality content I’ve gotten as a result.

Beyond just the roundup-style articles that feature people I want to connect with, my podcast has also been one of the most useful tools I’ve ever employed in this long-term relationship-building process.

Having a podcast gives me an easy excuse to reach out & chat with my biggest heroes in the blogging space—while still providing them real value (surfacing these guests to my audience of listeners and readers).

This technique works so well because it’s a true win-win for everyone involved.

Plus, including other voices across your site increases your own blog’s overall authority, and it grows your value to the community. It’s also very likely that your guest will share the interview with their audience, giving you even greater exposure. This type of collaboration is mutually beneficial for all parties, including your readers.

Co-Host Joint Webinars

In addition to being a guest on a podcast, you can also co-host a webinar with another blogger in your space to bring your combined audiences together in the name of providing value (while also exposing each other to similar audiences).

A webinar is an online event, Q&A session or presentation—and they provide another opportunity for not only connecting with your audience (live) to answer questions and deliver value, but to also promote your blog in a meaningful way.

Team up with someone who’s a little more well-known in your industry, and you’ll get an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise with them in a live video setting.

Don’t be afraid to also reach out to brands who operate in your niche—as they’re always seeking new people to get their products or services in front of (and have people that can share valuable knowledge with your combined audiences).

Join Communities in Your Blog’s Niche

You may not be aware of it, but there are hundreds, possibly even thousands of online communities within your niche.

Joining these groups can be a really great way to promote your blog and simultaneously provide value to people in your space. It’s also a good way to meet fellow bloggers, network, find potential promotional partners and learn from each other.

There are also quite a few Facebook groups that you can join, some of which help by creating a regular space & time for sharing your content—or by soliciting feedback from readers who agree to review your content. You may even find some solid collaboration partners from participation in the right communities.

Promote Your Blog by Contacting Every Person (and Brand) You Mention

I talked about internal links above, but external links have a major benefit in terms of promoting your blog, as well. In fact, this technique forms the basis of how I’ve been able to start relationships with lots of influential people in my niche—through clever blogger outreach. Here’s how it works:

For each blog post I write, I aim to have round 10-20 outbound links

When I publish my blog post, I’ll email the people or brands I mention (to let them know I linked to them in my post)

If they reply, I’ll often ask if they’d be willing to share my article with their followers on social media

This approach works so well, because it delivers value first. It stands out from the dozen other emails your prospective partner gets during their day—where people are simply asking for them to share or link to an article without providing any up-front value first… and therein lies your opportunity.

Keep in mind though, even I don’t always hear back from every person I reach out to. But even if half of the bloggers I message end up sharing my post—it still gets the word out a lot more than I otherwise would have.

Practicing this kind of networking can also lead to more collaboration opportunities, regular social sharing swaps, future guest blogging spots and more. These kinds of partnerships help both parties to reach wider audiences within the same niche, so they’re a clear win-win.

Leave Comments on Other Blogs

Another very easy way to start networking with other bloggers (and getting them to a place where they recognize your name & photo), is to leave comments on their blog posts.

For example, Jacob McMillen has been an active reader and commenter here on my blog for over a year now… and the fact that he’s consistently showed up in the comments section of my blog, made me jump at the opportunity to reply when he finally emailed me with a collaboration idea. Since then, we’ve been slowly building a stronger relationship and finding more win-win ways to support each other’s work.

This doesn’t take anything but a little bit of your time each week, and you can pretty quickly initiate a connection with a blogger you want to one day collaborate with. It may also open the door for further opportunities in the future—like guest posting, social sharing or otherwise.

12. Use the Right Tools and Resources to Make Promoting Your Blog Easier

Keeping up with promoting your blog can be a lot of work—especially as new blog promotion strategies rise in popularity and yet others fade in viability.

If there’s one constant as a blogger… it’s that change never stops occurring. My advice is to be at peace with the reality that you’ll continually need to reinvent yourself as a blogger, and always keep an eye out for new promotional strategies you can experiment with (and learn from).

Now by this stage in your blogging journey, you’ve probably already spent a large portion of your time writing your blog content. Now that you’ve done that, you have to dedicate even more time to promoting it and acquiring readers.

I feel your pain. Blogging is not an easy gig, especially not when you’re just establishing yourself. That’s why I always recommend using the best tools available to help lighten your load and amplify the work you’re putting in.

For an in-depth look into all of the tools I recommend to bloggers, head over to my picks for the best blogging tools. Here’s a look at some of the most relevant in terms of learning how to promote your blog more successfully.

Use Ahrefs to Strategically Promote Your Blog Content

Ahrefs is one of the most useful (paid) blogging tools for helping develop your SEO (and content promotion) strategy. For keyword research and competitor analysis, it’s by far the best resource on the market today—but it comes at a pretty hefty price, starting at $99/mo. If you’re on a budget, I recommend using the free Twinword Ideas (up next below).

Many years ago, Ahrefs began as a backlink checker—a service it still provides today. Since then though, Ahrefs has expanded to include dozens more incredibly useful features. They now offer content research and analysis, keyword research, competitor research and on-page SEO analysis (amongst many others).

As I mentioned though, this tool is far from free, which can be a deterrent for brand new bloggers. You may not want to invest in a tool today goes far beyond your blog budget. However, keep in mind that it’s a powerful tool for putting together a strong plan of action to promote your blog content once you’re able to afford it.

Twinword Ideas Can Fuel Your Keyword Research

This fantastic free tool gives you a quick look at which terms are being searched the most within your niche—and will show you clear suggestions for keywords to target (and article topics to write about on your blog). It even breaks the suggestions down by country and language, in case you’re targeting a non-English speaking market.

Use the Yoast SEO Plugin to Boost Your Rankings on Google

The first (free) WordPress plugin I always recommend bloggers to install, is Yoast SEO. It adds an extremely useful toolbar to the bottom of your blog posts (when viewing them internally as the writer), that provides a wide range of SEO recommendations that’ll help make sure your content is hitting all the most important SEO best practices—thus giving you a much greater chance of ranking high in organic search for your target keyword phrase.

Encourage 1-Click Content Sharing and Email Capturing with Sumo

Sumo’s WordPress plugin is an all-in-one marketing tool that performs a wide range of functions for free.

If you want more great tool suggestions along these lines, check out my recommendations for all of the best WordPress plugins you should consider installing on your blog today.

Final Thoughts: Be Patient with Learning How to Promote Your Blog

Many bloggers start out with a ton of excitement and ambition when they first launch their blogs.

Unfortunately, that enthusiasm can diminish rather quickly when you don’t immediately see the results you’re hoping for—especially when it comes to promoting your blog content and bringing in your first readers.

Be patient with yourself and your blog.

When it comes to blog promotion, there are some hard truths you need to keep in mind.

Organic traffic is a great way to promote your blog… but it can often take a while before you begin to see the fruits of your work. In some cases, it can take months or even upwards to a year before your organic search rankings are able to climb to a meaningful position that delivers you significant traffic.

When you begin to get discouraged with your blogging efforts, remind yourself to stay on course.

It’s your consistent effort that’ll pay off in the long run with growing your blog to a point where it’s generating substantial traffic—and eventually making money. Once you are generating some revenue, be sure to bookmark my guide about taxes for bloggers (and stay on top of your blog finances).

In this guide, we’ve gone through some of my best advice on how to promote your blog. That doesn’t mean you should try to implement all of these strategies at once though. Trying to do everything will leave you overwhelmed and stressed—plus, it won’t give you a clear indication of what’s actually working in terms of driving results.

Your Plan of Action to Promote Your Blog Today

Follow these steps, starting right now:

Focus in on just 1 – 3 of these blog promotion strategies (ideally ones that lean on your own strengths) and commit to a 3 – 6 month test

As difficult or unclear as it may feel, really give these new tactics a few months to see if they yield results

When a strategy shows positive signs, direct more of your resources toward that one

If you’re not experiencing positive results anywhere, try directing your energy into a different set of strategies from this guide (after your 3 – 6 month test window)

Remember that no matter how you slice it…

It takes real time to build a successful blog. I’m 6 years into my journey here, and while the pay off took some time… I can tell you my investment has been very worthwhile.

Your blog isn’t a failure if it takes months or even years to achieve the traffic and revenue figures you hope to one day reach.

Plant the seeds today, work hard on promoting your blog and you’ll reap the rewards in the months and years to come.

Hi I'm Ryan Robinson

Full-time blogger, podcaster and side project aficionado. Join me here, on ryrob.com to learn how to start a blog, make money blogging and grow a profitable side business. I also write for publications like Fast Company, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc, Business Insider and more. Let’s chat on Twitter about business and side projects.

Awesome, thanks for always following along here Mudassir! Wishing you luck in your blog promotion efforts over the coming weeks and months—stick with one or two strategies here that align well with your skills/experience/strengths and I’m confident you’ll see results in time 🙂

Yes! I’ve tried the RankMath plugin and have no major complaints about it—though I do still prefer Yoast personally. Maybe it’s partially out of nostalgia that I’ve been using that plugin for nearly a decade, but it feels like a more mature product in comparison. Otherwise, they’re both solid at the job they do 💪

I highly appreciate the time and effort you put into this post. It just about sums up the bits of and pieces of strategy that I have found on other sites but all conveniently in one place 🙂 Over this quarantine I took the jump and finally created my blog! No content published yet but I can start planning the roadmap for the business. Do you think it would be wise to write 3-5 pillar posts when I commit to start blogging and then maybe start pitching for guest posts (maybe even outsourcing the content creation for the guest posts) so that way I can simultaneously work on getting both paid/organic traffic? (I have seen this strategy promoted by Adam Enfroy where he encourages new bloggers to think like the ceo of a startup, rather than a writer)

I’m glad you took the plunge and started working on your blog, despite being in such a unique time right now. To your question—yep, I’d 100% recommend starting with a small handful of pillar posts and just use your guest blogging as a vehicle to build quality links back to those pillar articles (that you hope to one day rank high in organic search). I say do it!

I’m considering the networking with bloggers in your own niche tips and how and when to do them as we are deep into content creation right now.

Anyways I did have one SEO question:

What one SEO strategy would you recommend makes the biggest difference but might take the least time as we are strapped for time to work on SEO at the moment? That is what is the SEO work you did that you spent little time on but a saw a BIG difference?

You’re welcome, Jeremy! Glad to hear you found these strategies useful.

Which one SEO strategy would I focus on at this moment (and preferably one with the lowest time investment)? The answer is always… it depends 🙂

It depends very heavily on where you’re at today and what you’re currently doing well (or doing not so well) in terms of SEO on your blog. Check out my guide about SEO best practices (linked to in #1 of this guide above) and make sure you’re nailing as much as you can in regards to your on-page SEO, because that’s a huge area of opportunity that many bloggers don’t really invest much time into… and therefore leaves an opportunity for someone to make a mark in their niche with useful, transformative, long-form content that ticks the boxes in terms of on-page SEO.

From there, I always always always recommend guest blogging as the #1 thing most bloggers can do to grow their traffic and get their content ranking higher in organic search results. The reality is that all (worth) things take some time to pay off with blogging, but the return on placing a few quality guest posts on sites with a strong domain authority can really skyrocket the rankings of your content. After getting your own best practices dialed in, guest blogging is where I’d recommend investing your time.

Your article is a great read, and also a resource or bloggers. You did well. Performing competitor research helps in several ways, including identifying keyword terms they’re using to rank on Google, understanding how they write, and structure their posts to make them user-friendly, which improves search visibility, as well as other vital pointers. Moreover, the concept of using the right blogging tools also helps in streamlining the blog promotion processes, such as the right tools for keyword research, social media marketing, content optimization, and more. You got it all covered. Thank you for sharing!

You rock, thanks so much Moss! Love seeing you pop up here in the comments (and on Twitter) 🙂

Absolutely agree with you on the value of thoughtful competitor research… even when I already have an idea for a topic I want to write about on my blog, sometimes looking at how other competitors in my space have cover the subject (or not covered it) gives me a lot of insight into how I can better position my own resource, shows me areas of opportunity, titling tips and interesting ways I can make my content stand out.

My brain is exploding!! Thanks for this very comprehensive guide. An excellent example in and of itself. Thank heavens you suggested just trying 3 strategies at a time. Which would you recommend for someone starting out? Cheers

Haha you’re welcome! And YES… right you are—please only ever invest a lot of your time/effort/budget into a maximum of 3 promotional strategies if you’re working solo on your blog. Anything more than that, you’re likely to dilute your own effectiveness in a major way. Here’s my advice for what you should focus on when you’re just starting out:

1. Nailing your SEO best practices on your own blog (without that foundation, you’ll have a hard time ever cracking organic search rankings) 2. Guest blogging like there’s no tomorrow (this is hands down the #1 strategy I’ve been able to use—and teach—in terms of growing your blog) 3. Pick just 1 social network to go all in on for 1-3 months as an experiment (ideally a platform where you believe your target readers spend the most time)

Hey RYAN, thanks again for the incredible amount of informations on your blog! I have a further question to the point “Maybe other blogs have decent information, but their graphics and images are of poor quality?” Which software do you use for creating this very nice post header images on your blog? I already check out your post “101 Essential Online Business Tools” but didn´t find the right stuff 😀 Thanks for now and nice greetings Michael

I use a combination of Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop to create my blog graphics—and to be honest, using those tools is a skill set that’s taken many years to get halfway decent at. You can get very similar style graphics at the end of the day by using free/cheap design tools like Stencil, Canva and Snappa—or by hiring an affordable graphic designer on sites like Fiverr or 99Designs to create a pack of design elements you can use (and reuse) across your future blog content.

This article came right on time, as I was looking for a resource to learn about blog promoting. It turns out very complete and thorough so that I don’t feel the need to search any further because every aspect is covered here.

So much value in this post Ryan. SEO is by far the best and most profitable source of traffic and thanks for demonstrating it with your results.

And talking about Guest Blogging, it’s becoming annoying from the quality of pitches we get and very often, these are from some backlink mongers who want nothing else but backlink. But my results have been tremendous because my approach really works.

Love hearing that, Enstine! Thanks for sharing—and yep, if you can truly differentiate your guest blogging pitch to be one that provides value first (rather than immediately asking for something), then the road to getting published is much easier 🙂